Essays » Murderous thoughts on a very small island
Murderous thoughts on a very small island
At around 3am, just as the first light was seeping into the southeast corner of the Alaskan sky, there was a murder outside our tent. While this came as no surprise to us, it was inconvenient, as it soon became apparent that there would be no more sleep that night.
The previous day we had arrived at The New Eddystone Rock by sea kayaks after a long wet haul from Alava Point, grateful for a tail wind. The rock is an improbable column of basalt that has somehow defied the glaciations that sculpted Alaska's Misty Fiords National Monument, and now stands alone in the middle of Behm Canal. It had beckoned us for most of the day, in the same way that it beckoned George Vancouver in 1793. He described it as “a rock much resembling a ship under sail” and named it after the lighthouse that presides over the entrance to Portsmith Harbour. Being a little over 70 metres high and about 15 metres in diameter at the base, it's my guess that the crew of the lower decks had another name for it, invoking phallic imagery. At high tide the island at the base of the rock is reduced to a small fringe of rough grass and driftwood and it was here we decided to camp, for as well as having plenty of novelty appeal as a camp site, it was free of bears.
A couple of long gravel spits curve away from the base of the rock at low tide. As we arrived, a few dozen Kittiwakes were hunkered down on one of the spits, facing into the rain squalls that were marching up the canal from the southwest. Harbour seals watched us from the bay between the gravel spits. They had a nervous disposition and would panic for no apparent reason, disappearing in a flurry of spray. Orcas hunt in packs for these seals, and they always seem to be anticipating an attack.
We hurried to pitch our tent and set up a fly to collect drinking water from the rain. With dry clothes and a hot drink, the place soon felt like home.
Then the crows started arriving. The vertical sides of the rock are cloaked in trees sustained by rainfall rather than soil. These, evidently are ideal places for crows to roost. As the day drew to a close, more and more crows flew in across the water and prospects for a good nights sleep started looking bleak. For crows are highly social birds, and that means a lot of communication, and as the number of birds increased, that meant they all had to shout... “caw!” They eventually settled around midnight - about an hour after dark, and the short night was punctuated by skirmishes – as if they were all sharing the same, slighlty inadequate, duvet.
In the pale blue/grey of the pre-dawn, when decent folk (and birds) are asleep, the first task of the day for a crow is to be re-establish its social standing within its community, greet neighours, re-kindle disputes and generally wake the entire sleeping world.
Just why a collection of crows should be called a murder had always been a mystery to me, but at 3am, the association between murder and crows could not have been clearer in my mind. This small epiphany came to me accompanied with a new appreciation for sayings like “stone the crows” and a new empathy for the inventor of the scarecrow.
George Vancouver had breakfast on our little beach 214 years earlier, almost to the day. His account doesn't mention crows, which is enough to tell me he didn't try to sleep there. John Sykes, a midshipman turned artist who had joined the Royal navy at the age of ten, produced a fine image of the occasion. It shows no fewer than ten birds flying around its summit but it's hard to tell whether they are crows.
Vancouver met three canoes of Tlingit Indians here, and found them to be of “utmost good humour”. We met nobody, but several float plane loads of tourists circled the rock as they flew between the cruise ship terminal at Ketchikan and the massive granite walls of Rudyerd Bay that are the main attraction of Misty Fiords National Monument.
Next day a heavy wet chill had replaced the windy squalls. Rafts of murrelets and auklets drifted past with the tide as the resident bald eagles launched themselves from their nest at the top of the rock and headed across the canal to check out progress on the salmon run that was poised to start. Dark clouds of salmon were milling around at the entrance of every creek and the occasional fish would skitter through the shallows, dorsal fins exposed. Tourist planes flew confidently in and out of the murk that hid a low mountain pass connecting Behm Canal with Tongass Narrows and its port of Ketchikan. Large catamarans also brought the more budget minded tourists on day trips, and the big silver vessels would slow as they passed the New Eddystone Rock a couple of hundred metres off, so the tour guide could give a commentary through a PA system.
We headed across to the shores of Revilligigedo Island where we would meet a lone wolf patrolling the shoreline. Wet through after the rain and in its summer coat it looked lean and ragged, but retained an air of confidence - showing no fear, just measured curiosity.
When the cruise ships departed, the tourist activity would cease and then things would be pretty much as they were in Vancouver's day; Admittedly the Tlingit Indians were gone and where Vancouver found the rock to be “standing perpetually on a surface of fine, dark coloured sand”, we found coarse gravel and boulders. But across the canal, the crescent shaped intertidal rock walls of the Tlingit fish traps were still intact and the salmon, bears and eagles went about their business as ever.
The crows especially seemed to be unaffected by the presence or absence of mankind. They have their own routines and are unmoved by our own diurnal rhythms. Good for them. After all, the essence of wilderness travel is fitting in to an unfamiliar and unaccommodating environment.
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Malcolm Gunn
malcolm@malcolmgunn.com